muticore cpus for routers:D

[Goosemaster]

Those crazy network card threads by that spammer got me to thinkin'....


(after I stopped throwing rocks)


I honestly gave any thought about it, but how well do you suppose muticore (dual for now or 8 if you are lucky enough to play around with a Sun T1 machine) CPUs perform, or would perform, compraed to their single core counterparts as routers, given that most traffic is serial?

Anyone?

It would be cool if multi-service software like Astaro were dual-core capable. Anyone know if Snort and other popular proxy/security software outthere supports multiple cores/threads?

 

[n0cmonkey]

I've seen snort use more than 50% of the available CPU power in some dual CPU systems.

 

[jlazzaro]

i think your dumbing down the network processor architectures and thinking of them too much like PC processors. A network processor contains not one, but many individual processors, which range in complexity from quite limited to fully programmable RISC processors. They use different strategies to divide up processing and they have different internal data flows for each. Some processors can run multiple threads with zero context switch time, and some even contain co-processors to perform specific tasks such as pattern matcing, table lookups, ect.

its not as simple as "single core" or "dual core"

 

[n0cmonkey]

Originally posted by: jlazzaro
i think your dumbing down the network processor architectures and thinking of them too much like PC processors. A network processor contains not one, but many individual processors, which range in complexity from quite limited to fully programmable RISC processors. They use different strategies to divide up processing and they have different internal data flows for each. Some processors can run multiple threads with zero context switch time, and some even contain co-processors to perform specific tasks such as pattern matcing, table lookups, ect.

its not as simple as "single core" or "dual core"

I don't think he means cisco or juniper level stuff, but more along the lines of the self-built PC router. A Linux or BSD system running some firewall software passing packets.

I could be wrong though. 🙂

 

[jlazzaro]

Originally posted by: n0cmonkey

Originally posted by: jlazzaro
i think your dumbing down the network processor architectures and thinking of them too much like PC processors. A network processor contains not one, but many individual processors, which range in complexity from quite limited to fully programmable RISC processors. They use different strategies to divide up processing and they have different internal data flows for each. Some processors can run multiple threads with zero context switch time, and some even contain co-processors to perform specific tasks such as pattern matcing, table lookups, ect.

its not as simple as "single core" or "dual core"

I don't think he means cisco or juniper level stuff, but more along the lines of the self-built PC router. A Linux or BSD system running some firewall software passing packets.

I could be wrong though. 🙂

I think you're right...at first glance I read it as why dont routers contains dual-core processors. kind of like sticking a couple conroe's in an xr 12000 🙂

 

[Goosemaster]

Originally posted by: n0cmonkey

Originally posted by: jlazzaro
i think your dumbing down the network processor architectures and thinking of them too much like PC processors. A network processor contains not one, but many individual processors, which range in complexity from quite limited to fully programmable RISC processors. They use different strategies to divide up processing and they have different internal data flows for each. Some processors can run multiple threads with zero context switch time, and some even contain co-processors to perform specific tasks such as pattern matcing, table lookups, ect.

its not as simple as "single core" or "dual core"

I don't think he means cisco or juniper level stuff, but more along the lines of the self-built PC router. A Linux or BSD system running some firewall software passing packets.

I could be wrong though. 🙂

Basically.

 

[cmetz]

Goosemaster, consider two things: packet reordering is bad, and dual-core chips have increased I/O contention.

Multicore chips can yield a performance increase in the hands of very skilled engineers. Those sorts of folks tend not to work for free.

 

[Goosemaster]

Originally posted by: cmetz
Goosemaster, consider two things: packet reordering is bad, and dual-core chips have increased I/O contention.

Multicore chips can yield a performance increase in the hands of very skilled engineers. Those sorts of folks tend not to work for free.

I see😀


Notice I said serial in my first post😉